​​​Peter Maxwell Slattery - The E.T Contact Experience

The solar system has a new most-distant member, bringing its outer frontier into focus. New work from Carnegie’s Scott Sheppard and Chadwick Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory is now in.They report the discovery of a distant ‘pinkish’ dwarf planet, around 450 kilometres wide, called 2012 VP113, which was found beyond the known edge of the solar system. This is likely one of thousands of distant objects that are thought to form the so-called inner Oort cloud. Its pink tinge comes from radiation damage that alters the make-up of frozen water, methane and carbon dioxide on the surface.